Page 129 of Scaled Daddy's Secret Heir
The back panel slides open and Clancy barrels in, cheeks flushed, hair wild, clutching the hovercrab in both hands.
“Dad! It can climb the fence now?—”
His voice cuts off when he clocks our faces.
The way Kalev’s jaw is set.
The way my hands are shaking.
“Did I do something wrong?” Clancy asks, small.
“No,” I say too fast. I drop to my knees and open my arms. “Come here, baby.”
He runs into me. I crush him to my chest, breathing him in like oxygen. Salt, grass, ozone, the faint sweetness of the juice pouch he spilled earlier.
Kalev’s voice is low and tight. “Leah?—”
The front wallexplodes inward.
Not literally—no fireball, no shrapnel—but the door rips off its hinges in a clean, violent motion that sends it skidding across the floor.
Men flood in.
Six of them.
Maybe eight.
Black armor. Shock batons already humming. Rifles up.
The room fills with the smell of ozone and machine oil and cold metal.
Clancy screams.
I spin, curling my body over his, my back to the threat.
“NO—!”
Hands grab my shoulders.
I bite one.
Hard.
A baton cracks across my ribs and all the air leaves my lungs in a sound that isn’t a word.
“LEAH!” Kalev roars.
They’re on him instantly.
Four men.
Tailored brutality.
Not sloppy.
Not panicked.
They hit pressure points, nerve clusters, joints.
